Is Dolores Park in San Francisco Haunted?

The world of spirits is a murky one, and it is often hard to
separate the history from the legend, the truth from the fiction, the concrete
from the mystical. This feat is complicated further in situations where a
location seems to be haunted by multiple spirits. It becomes almost impossible
when the presence of the spirits seems to follow certain people from one
location to another. To understand such a situation, you have to be willing to
accept that sometimes things are not as clear as we would like them to be in
the telling of our stories. Ghosts do not live in the sort of timeline in which
we live our daily lives, and they do not move through space in the same
tangible way in which we do. To understand their presence in an area, we have
to suspend our way of thinking for awhile and accept that maybe things do not
have to be entirely clear in order to be at least somewhat understood.

This is the case with San Francisco’s Dolores Park. The
history of the area is too complicated to understand with simple ease. The
presence of two different cemeteries on the site at different times makes it
hard to discern when spirits began appearing at the haunted location. The fact
that certain people seem to have experienced the same spirits both at Dolores
Park and elsewhere in the city makes Dolores Park that much more difficult to
understand. And of course there is the doubt that a lot of people have about
whether or not there’s such a thing as ghosts at all. But whether or not we
understand it, it is clear that something a bit unreal is happening in that
area of San Francisco.

The story of Dolores Park is one of those stories which is
best not told in linear fashion. Things do not proceed cleanly from “this
happened” to “that happened” in the history of Dolores Park and the spirits who
linger - or filter through – there. Instead, the story of Dolores Park is one
in which multiple characters weave back and forth through time so it makes the
most sense to look at the characters of this story.

Collette Brumfield

So the story begins with modern times and a young woman
named Collette Brumfield. Collette experienced her first encounter with the
spirit world one day when she was spending time with her boyfriend, John,
enjoying the peaceful beauty of Dolores Park. The two of them were the only
ones in the park at the time, and they were engaged in laughing conversation on
one of the park benches, immersed in the world between them and nearly
oblivious to the world around them, when suddenly they both heard the sound of
someone clapping.

They looked around, but they saw no one, and they couldn’t
quite tell where the source of the sound was emanating from. After spending
some time listening to the otherworldly clapping, they determined that it
sounded as though the clapping was coming from behind a nearby tree, but when
John went to see if anyone was there, no one could be found. As John moved
around the park in search of the maker of the sound, he and Collette began to
hear laughter. Each of them felt the presence of other people in the park, but
they could see through the open space of the urban retreat and no one else
appeared to be there. The experience spooked Collette so intensely that they
left the park immediately and both waited quite some time before ever returning.

John’s Other Haunted
Experience

If this was all that there was to the history of haunting in
Dolores Park, it could be passed off as an isolated incident which may not be
indicative of ghost activity at all. It could be assumed that somebody was
playing a prank on the young couple and just had the lighting and the
atmosphere right enough to pull it off. But the Dolores Park experience was not
the only experience that Collette’s boyfriend, John, would have with a ghost.

For a time, John lived in a home in the Pacific Heights
neighborhood of San Francisco. There was no doubt in his mind that a spirit was
haunting the location. Doors would close without assistance, lights would
flicker regularly. The presence of spirits became so disarming that eventually
a priest was called to the house to discern what was going on and (hopefully)
to expel the spirits from the location. During the priest’s visit, lights in
the home flickered uncontrollably, doors slammed, and there was suddenly an
animalistic roar emanating from downstairs

The Hebrew Cemetery

John’s experience in the Pacific Heights home could be
considered unrelated to his experience in Dolores Park that day that he and
Collette were together. However, history begs to differ. John’s Pacific Heights
home was built atop the original location of a Hebrew Cemetery. As San Francisco
grew, the Hebrew Cemetery was dug up and moved … directly to the location which
would eventually become Dolores Park!

The Hebrew Cemetery was closed in 1860, shortly after it was
moved to Dolores Park. The following year, a new Jewish Cemetery, the Gibbath
Olum Cemetery, opened in the same location (bordered by Church Street, Dolores,
18th and 20th). The Gibbath Olum Cemetery remained open
until 1888, at which time the settled bodies were again shifted, this time to
nearby Colma. Perhaps all of this shifting is what has made it so difficult for
the people once buried in the area to know where to spend out the rest of their
days and nights.

Is Dolores Park
Haunted?

So, is San Francisco’s Dolores Park haunted? It’s tough to
say. Most days when you go there you’ll see sunbathers and festival go-ers and
it won’t feel spooky at all. But if you do believe in ghosts then you may not
want to go there alone in the stillness of a no-moon night!

Note: This material is
excerpted and adapted from my book titled The Ghosts of San Francisco. All
research notes are contained in the book and can be provided on request.

Comments

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Andy 6 years ago

I've seen more scary looking things there alive than dead at Dolores Park.

Gr33nman 7 years ago

Maybe it was their own personal(mental) spirits? There is more space in your head than on this planet.Something to think about.

Liz Elias 7 years agofrom Oakley, CA

Grew up in SF--have been to that park, and never noticed anything unusual.

That said, does not mean nothing is going on out there. Ghosts/spirits don't often perform on demand. As you pointed out, there is no sense of time in their plane of existence.

However, it is fairly well documented, I guess the term would be, that spirit entities tend rather to hang around places that were familiar and comfortable to them in life, and sometimes to places where great trauma and sudden death occurred as well. Cemetaries, by contrast, are usually fairly spirit-free...no one ever 'lived' or 'was comfortable' there...and not many met their demise IN a cemetary.

So I'm thinking there must be other history to that area besides cemetaries.... ... ;-)

Springboard 7 years agofrom Wisconsin

The spooky and the supernatural has always been a topic of intrigue for me. This would be an intersting place to visit just to see what might be lurking in the shadows. Nice job on this hub.

Susan Haze 7 years agofrom Sunny Florida

I was going to suggest that you write a book about this subject. You have handled it very well, I was spellbound.